Lois E. Silverman

Founding Chair, The Commonwealth Institute

Mrs. Silverman’s professional career has spanned over 30 years in business where she is most well recognized as one of the first women in Massachusetts to take a company public. In 1988, she founded CRA Managed Care (now Concentra Managed Care), a provider of services to reduce the costs of workers’ compensation, automobile, disability and health insurance claims. She served as Chairman of the Board of the public company from 1994 to September 1997 and as CEO from 1988 to 1995.

Mrs. Silverman has extended her business expertise and philanthropy to the 1997 founding of The Commonwealth Institute, a dynamic non-profit committed to helping women entrepreneurs and senior executives build successful companies.

In October of 2005, Mrs. Silverman became the first woman chair of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She is a director of Fiduciary Trust Company and Immunetics, Inc., a former trustee at Brandeis University, a corporator at Simmons College, a member of the Chairman’s Cabinet at the Hebrew SeniorLife and a director of Kramer Senior Services Agency and Morse Geriatric Center in Florida.

She has received numerous honors for her business acumen and leadership abilities. In 2003, she was named to the Top 100 Most Influential Women in Boston by Boston Magazine. In the fall of 2005, she received the Philanthropic Innovator Award from The Committee of 200 and was chosen as a Woman Who Makes a Difference from the International Women’s Forum. She received her nursing degree from Beth Israel Hospital in 1961, an honorary undergraduate degree from Simmons College in 2002, an honorary doctorate from Babson College in 2003 and an honorary doctorate from Simmons in 2011.